Peter Pan should have known George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.

They all staunchly refused to grow up, but Lucas and Spielberg have become rich by remaining boys.

Their infectious juvenility has won Lucas and Spielberg a prominent place in movie history, to understate the case. They are responsible -- together and singly, as producers and directors -- for the six biggest-earning movies ever made: "E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial," "Star Wars," "Return of the Jedi," "The Empire Strikes Back," "Jaws" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

In addition, "Spielberg's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" ranks 11th on the all-time list, and Lucas' "American Graffiti" is listed 26th.

They have, in short, made money. Nearly $1 billion in rentals -- not total grosses, just rentals -- on the first six films cited.

You can now add a seventh -- "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" -- to that honor roll. It opens today at the Fulton, Showcase East and West, Village, North Hills, Cheswick and Cinema World. And the line forms in every direction.

A followup to "Raiders," the new Paramount release actually takes place earlier than that landmark adventure film. It opens in Shanghai in 1935 in a nightclub where Willie Scott (played by Kate Capshaw) is entertaining the audience with a Chinese version of Cole Porter's "Anything Goes."

Call it an early warning sign, but this sequence under the opening credits quickly turns into Busby Berkeley camp, with platoons of sequined chorus girls tapping away in military formations.

Aren't the boys getting a little too playful already? Indiana Jones, in the new film, has evolved from a mild-mannered archeologist involved in breathtaking adventures into a Superman-clone even further removed from the real world than Robert Redford in "The Natural."

"Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" is much more far-fetched than its predecessor. It is also more action-packed, if you can imagine that.

Stunningly staged action sequences follow almost without interruption, and the good guys -- Indiana, singer Willie and a small Asian boy named Short Round (played by the agreeable Ke Huy Quan) -- find themselves involved in enough last-minute escapes to fill a 15-chapter serial. Highlights include:

• A leap from a crashing airplane to a snowy mountaintop in a rubber raft, then floating down the mountain into white-water rapids.

• A chase through underground tunnels in mining cars.

• A cliffside battle above alligator-filled waters.

• An encounter with a cave full of gruesome insects that will have the whole audience squirming in their seats.

• A fight with a fanatic villain who can rip out a man's heart with his bare hands.

• Enough torture scenes to delight the Marquis de Sade.

There is a whole middle sequence that grows nasty to the point of being troublesome. There was plenty of violence in "Raiders of the Lost Ark," but it all had a grand adventure accent that made it palatable. This time, things get a bit ugly with floggings of children, hideous bugs crawling in the heroine's hair, a body bursting into flames as it's lowered into what seems to be a volcano and a banquet scene that could inspire the greatest mass barfing since "The Exorcist."

But even this devilish business is a reflection of the untamed boyishness of Spielberg and Lucas. They delight in showing us a spread of eyeball soup, chilled monkey brains, cooked beetles and live snakes in the same spirit of 11-year-old boys trying to gross out their little sisters at the dinner table.

The rest of the action may be a bit strong for small children, but is hardly calculated to upset the vast audience that will respond to this film with boundless enthusiasm. After Monday's invitational screening for a noisy audience at the Fulton Theater, Downtown, I heard people already making plans to see it again.

Harrison Ford slips easily into the character of Indiana again, wearing the same battered hat and leather jacket and carrying that dependable whip. He makes a surprise first appearance in white dinner jacket, looking as if he strolled in from a Noel Coward play.

With his shirt off, he displays a few new muscles -- would you believe an on-screen credit reading "Physical conditioning for Mr. Ford by Body by Jake, Inc." -- but nothing as extreme as the John Travolta bod in "Staying Alive."

The 15-year-old feminist with whom I saw the movie objected that Kate Capshaw did little but stand around and scream instead of pitching in and helping Ford clout the villains.

Other than that, she had no complaints. Neither did most of the audience. And who am I to argue? Now, let's see, what night can we see it again ...

The film is given a rather liberal PG rating for its high quotient of violence.